Ian's View
by Starr Rose
Summary: Snapshots of how Ian saw things. I may add more. I may not.
1. Chapter 1

**First Sight**

I'd seen plenty up close but that one was so close to death that I didn't understand why Jeb would give it water, force it to live just so that Kyle could kill it, and he would kill it. But it lay there in the shade of that tree as if it were the last thing keeping it alive. Its skin was so burnt I couldn't tell if there'd ever been anything under the flaking, peeling, blistery flesh. It was barely discernible as a woman. But it could never be known if one of their parasites was male or female or if it even had the option. Their kind stole our bodies and wore them like coats. They took fathers from children, sisters from brothers, and lovers from one another. Kyle lost his Jodie to one of them. I lost everything. Why would we ever keep it alive?

Bile rose in my throat at the sight of it laying there and a part of me hoped never to touch it, but another angrier, blacker part hoped that I would be the one to kill it. The one to watch the silver light disappear from the eyes of whatever person it had been before. But I knew that the Jeb would probably take it to Doc with the hope that his niece would come out in one piece. She wouldn't though. They never did. They ripped and tore away at the things they inhabited, like angry children beating at a house. The difference being that the parasites destroyed it. I'd seen them after they'd been cut out, slashed out, torn from the bodies they wore so grandly. They were disgusting silver slime. And they refused to be removed without blood from the person, without crushing their brain and their lungs and everything that kept them living. They took our home, took our bodies, and then, took our deaths when they left. The thing on the ground underneath the tree, the thing that had once been Jeb's niece, Melanie Stryder, that thing would do the same, except it would bring hell down upon us.

It would find a way to escape. It would run from its cell, run from the cave and find help on the highway. It would bring seekers down upon us and we would all die or be taken by them. It had already bewitched Jeb into threatening Kyle, when he'd helped the group with his raids and his rush to capture and learn from the worms. It was able to captivate, and then, we would be gone. We would become them. Well, not Kyle and I. We'd promised. We would die first. We would take our own lives before we would allow anything to be us, and I was certain that Melanie Stryder had felt the same before she'd been crushed by the worm living in her head. We knew without a doubt that it had to be us that killed the body and killed the worm. Nobody else could do what needed to be done.


	2. Put to Death

**Put to Death**

There was one empty room in the entire caves. It was the storage room. We all knew that it wouldn't be staying with anybody. Jared wouldn't let it stay with him and the kid, even if he was the one guarding it. And nobody else even wanted it in the caves in the first place. It was disgusting that it had been allowed in in the first place. Jeb should have shot it right there in the sand. Or Jared should have killed it in the meeting room. When he hit it, all of us cheered inside, even though the moment was too serious for words. As soon as Jeb and Jared carried it away, Kyle, Brandt, and I agreed. It had to be found and it had to be taken care of. There was no way around it.

Sure enough, just as we thought, it was in the storage area and Jared was its only protector. Jeb was wandering the caves like he always did at night. It was the perfect time to find it and take care of the problem before it spread throughout the caves. We just didn't expect Jared to stand in our way. He had more reason to hate it than we did. It took over his Melanie's body. She'd been a pretty girl and, from what Jared and Jamie told us, she had a lot of fight in her. She was perfect for the resistance, but in the end it hadn't mattered and the thing inhabiting her body needed taken care of. Kill the body, kill the parasite. It had to be done. So we went in with that goal in mind.

Luckily, Kyle's a great deal bigger than Jared so when the fight started, Brandt and Kyle were able to take care of him while the brain dead parasite threw itself to us. It was so desperate to get in front of Jared that it didn't pay any attention to where it was going and it landed right in front of me. I put it in an arm lock while Brandt and Kyle struggled with Jared and then Kyle shouted the words I'd been waiting to hear. "Finish it, Ian."

It was easy to get it turned around and facing me so that I could wrap my hands around its throat. Melanie was tall, but there was nothing to her body. My fingers easily touched when I grabbed its soft neck and I pressed hard with my palms while I squeezed, cutting off its air supply. I didn't like the feeling of its neck between my hands or the softness that rubbed my callused hands as I pushed them together. It felt too much like killing a human. I'd never killed one of them up close before. None of us had to. We gathered them and Doc took care of them. We didn't need to strangle them until they turned blue and stopped breathing. We didn't need to press the life from it. Doc did it when he tried to yank them out. But there I was, with my big, dirty fingers around its throat. If my dad was still alive, he wouldn't have been able to do it. Not while it was wearing a woman's body. If Jodi had still been around, Kyle probably wouldn't have been able to do it. But dad wasn't still alive and Jodi wasn't around and the thing in front of me needed removed from the world before it hurt a lot more people. So that's what I was going to do.

At least, that's what I was going to do until the sound of Jeb pumping his shotgun echoed through the air of the cave. He was pissed off at us for trying to take care of the problem he caused. We all knew he was half bat shit crazy but we did't know he was crazy enough to try to get all of us killed just for curiosity. He eve called it his **guest**. Like it was a real person. Like it was a real girl. Then, he handed over control to Jared, who should have had the most reason to want it dead but was instead focusing on the fact that it looked like his long gone girlfriend. He didn't understand that just because the voice and the body matched, didn't mean that the thing inside was her. He'd preached so much about taking care of the problem and resisting control, but there he was, keeping it from the death it deserved. From the death we wanted to give to it. They let it keep breathing like it was some sort of pet. It made me sick, but we all knew that disobeying one of Jeb's thousands of rules would result in exile from the cave or being shot by that damn gun. We knew he was barely there on a good day. On a bad day, any of us could go at any second. Hell, on some good days any of us could go at any second.


	3. It's AfraidGuilt

**It's Afraid**

I only meant to go down there to bullshit with Jared. Let him know that the parasites searching for our newly acquired pet were gone. All except the stupid one in the black. Kyle and I watched it for hours, laughing at it. Waiting for it to fall over and die the way ours had. But it didn't. It traveled back and forth. Back and forth. Arguing with others, a new thing for us. We'd never seen one argue before. We'd never seen one act anything but polite before. But there it was, trying to start a fight with the others. And it packed a weapon. A Glock. Unlike the other parasites, that just carried mild weapons and acted like they couldn't touch them for fear the objects would jump up and bite them, that one, the unpleasant one, kept its hand on the gun all the time. As if it were waiting for somebody to come along so it could shoot it. It walked like Jeb did, waiting for a challenge.

When I mentioned it to Jared, our pet freaked out. We weren't expecting the frightened hiss that escaped that tiny cave. It was like a cat when you stepped on its tail. It hissed and cringed back in the corner, trying to hide. Trying for us not to notice her. It was shaking like a leaf on a tree. Its entire little body was vibrating back and forth and its arms were wrapped tight, trying to protect it and trying to stop the shivering. Jared didn't care about that though. He went right in yelling. He'd obviously never been around wild animals. Scared animals didn't cooperate. They just got even more scared when the yelling started. I tried to tell him that it wouldn't work. That it was frightened and he needed to be calm. But, instead of listening, he hit me again. The first hit, when I tried to kill the parasite, busted my lip. The second one, thankfully, glanced off my jaw and filled my mouth with blood. But it was better for Jared to get pissed and hit me than it was to hit the scared bug when he was trying to get information from it.

But it did give him information and the information it spewed was strange. It didn't like somebody. The parasites were supposed to like everybody. That was how their society worked. They were the alien Brady Bunch. Watching them was like watching a weird episode of Leave It to Beaver. Nobody fought. Nobody argued. Things were just fine. But it didn't want to tell the Seeker about Jared and Jamie and, then, it tried to lie to us. It lied to us about why it couldn't access memories. It was a strange thing to lie about. I knew there had to be another reason. But it lied. It told us the body had been damaged by the fall, when we all knew that the parasites could heal bodies. They wouldn't put one of their own in a body they couldn't use. We didn't know what they would do with the body but we knew they wouldn't endanger one of their own like that.

I tried to tell Jared that was something was off about it. That they didn't lie. That it wasn't a Seeker. There was no way in the world that it was a Seeker, and, everything it had just said, everything it had done since it arrived, was making me doubt my own way of thinking. My own life. Jared, however, was convinced. It was the enemy. No matter what. And I knew that. I knew that it was the enemy. That it was just a little worm curled into the back of some poor girl's head. But that didn't mean we had to treat it the way we were. We didn't have to keep trying to make it disappear the way we were. If we were going to get rid of it, I would rather have it killed the quick way. Not by being sent to Doc or letting me and Kyle at it, but by letting Jeb take care of it. I didn't want to be its best friend, but I didn't want it to suffer either. It was the first step in my change.

**Guilt**

I put those marks on her neck. They were the same size, the same shape as my fingers. If I'd wrapped my hands around her neck again, my fingers would fit over them like stains. Because of us, because of me, she flinched whenever a human tried to touch her. Even in kindness. She didn't speak. She barely breathed. Yet, we kept treating her like she was going to run from us. Like she was just going to kill us and run away. She wouldn't hurt us if we begged her to. She couldn't hurt us if we begged her to. Yet, there were long black marks decorating her neck, like ashen burns. I knew that they would fade, that eventually her neck would no longer ache when she moved. I knew that Jarred would probably tire of having the body around, or he would decide that Doc would have better luck with her than he had any of the rest, and he would send her to be cut out of the girl's body. But I didn't think my guilt would fade with the bruises or with the tiny parasite. I hurt somebody who would never lift a finger to me. That didn't make me better than her. That didn't make my life worth more than hers. That didn't make me any more human than her.


	4. The Tour

**The Tour**

He was taking her on a tour of the place. Treating her like she'd be staying with us forever and it made me curious as to how far Jeb planned on taking it. He walked her right into the mess hall like he expected us all to just accept it. I thought most of the others were going to have heart attacks. I thought she was going to lay down and die right there. She froze, staring at all of us as if we were going to kill her. Then, her eyes found mine and the look in them was enough to make me feel ashamed for the rest of my life. I assumed that she thought I would be gone with Kyle and, when I wasn't, it shocked her. It scared her. I scared her. I felt guiltier than usual.

But then, Jamie jumped up to go on the tour with them and Doc and I followed, which scared her even more. She jumped in between us and the kid faster than she'd jumped in between Jared and us. If I'd tried to attack Jamie, she would have killed me or done her damnedest to get the job done. The thing was barely more violent than an earthworm, but she wouldn't have let me touch that boy, even if it meant my hands around those barely faded bruises on her neck again. But Jeb said that Doc and I could tag along if we behaved ourselves, and we did. We even kept our distance from her, which wasn't hard since she was almost walking in front of even Jeb.

It was clear that she was torn between all of us. Between paying attention to Jeb, paying attention to Jamie, and keeping a close eye on me and Doc. It was strange to think that she loved Jamie. She, the little worm in the back of a woman's skull, would risk her life to protect a child she'd never truly met. She had the memories of him and Jared, but they'd never been part of her life. She'd been somewhere far away when they were with Melanie. She hadn't even been part of the picture. And some people would blame it on body memory. Say that Melanie's memories were enough to make the parasite act the way it was, but that didn't seem true. I'd never seen a parasite move to protect a human the way she did. I'd never seen a parasite risk their life for somebody the human loved. I'd never seen them react to somebody the human cared for. It was just cut and dry. Capture and inject. Even if that did mean killing the memory of that person. But not her.

When we reached Doc's place, she lost herself. She was scared again, which I didn't understand at first since Doc and I had behaved ourselves perfectly. I hadn't tried to kill her or even talk to her. I'd just followed along. But then Jamie and Jeb explained what was happening. The paranoid little worm actually thought we led her to Doc's place to make it easy to kill her, which wasn't a bad thing. If I hadn't felt so guilty, I would have wished that Kyle and I took more time to think things through. It would have been perfect to gain her trust and lead her right into death's waiting arms. But Kyle and I didn't think things through. We never had. We acted on pure instinct and it had kept us alive that long. But it still would have been a good plan.

She told us a little about her medicine, although she did it reluctantly like it was some kind of big secret to tell us how medicine worked. I guess I understood loyalty to your people, but parasites didn't get to have pride in themselves. They took over our planet. They took our lives away from us. But I still behaved myself. I still minded my manners and, when Jeb shooed us away, I left quietly. The tour kept my curiosity burning. I wanted to know more about her. I wanted to know why she came to earth. What she was doing on earth. What it was like to be in that body. In that brain. It was disgusting and it was fascinating. With Kyle gone, I could explore the morbid curiosity I seemed to have found for the worms. With Kyle gone, I could explore whatever I wanted.


	5. Wanda and Frog in the Water

**Wanda**

Wanda. The old coot gave her a nickname. Wanda. Short for Wanderer. She sure wandered straight into our laps. When he brought her out that first day to work the fields, she was so unsure of herself, scared to even touch the shovel that Jeb tried to hand her. But she took it. And she set to work without complaint. She was basically a slave. Kept captive and forced to work. But she whined less than most of the people who were there by choice. She just went all in and worked. I couldn't help but smile when she was working behind me. I wasn't afraid she was going to kill me with a shovel, and I wasn't planning on hurting her with the pick axe. I just did my job and she did hers.

However, nobody would let her have anything to drink. She was working her ass off in that hot field same as the rest of us. She deserved a drink. She deserved something. To be fair, Jeb and I were being ignored too. It was made clear that we were in exile. We were not to be talked to or served or even acknowledged. The most we got was furtive glances as people whispered. Jeb went on whistling like usual, ignoring the fact that he could be costing Wanda her life. So it was me that went to get water for her every time and it was me that she gave suspicious, distrusting looks to. I still terrified her, despite my best intentions. Though, to be fair, the bruises still decorated that little neck.

I saw them when she came out of the bath water, looking clean for the first time in the two weeks she'd been with us. Her dark hair was down around her face and her clothes weren't caked with blood and sweat. She didn't look good, no woman would in a torn up flannel and a pair of questionable sweatpants. But she looked better than she had in a long time. The bruises were clearer though. They weren't hidden by dirt, dried blood, and purple cave dust. They were there for all the world to see. As if announcing, "Look, Ian O'Shea beats women. Ian O'Shea is an asshole." And I was. She should have screamed it from the rooftops. She should have told anybody who would listen that I took advantage of the fact that she wouldn't hurt a fly. But she didn't do that. Instead, Wanda flinched away when I moved to touch the bruises that fit my fingers, and all I could do was apologize and wait for my turn in the bathing pool.

**Frog in the Water**

Doc and Jamie and I all knew about Jeb's convoluted frog in the water plan. The metaphor was that if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it would jump right out, but if you put a frog in a pot of regular water and slowly boiled it, it wouldn't leave. So that's what he was doing to Wanda. He was making her the water slowly boiling the frog. But he didn't understand that everybody in the caves weren't like frogs. They didn't just accept the water swirling around them. They bit at it, rebelled against being in the situation. And it would end up getting Wanda hurt. Even with my brother gone, it was dangerous for her.

Jeb tested her all the time. It was slow starting out. He thought we didn't notice. Doc and I. Of course we noticed. The old coot stopped carrying his shotgun with him and started leaving her alone. So Doc grabbed me one night after dinner and pulled me aside. He whispered, "He's going to get her killed."

"I know," I replied. "But there's nothing we can do about it. When Jeb makes up his mind, you know he's a stubborn old goat."

"We can't change his mind. I know that. But we can stick close to her. We can make sure that we're the only ones near enough to do her any harm, and we both know that neither of us have been feeling harmful."

"How do you think she's going to react to having us around though? You were meant to dissect her and I actually tried to kill her. She still has the bruises on her neck."

"They'll fade. Just stick near her."

That's how I ended up leading her along the south tunnels with the excuse that she would get lost. I wasn't particularly worried about her getting lost or escaping. I was worried about who she would run into. Maggie and Sharon wouldn't hesitate to hurt her and blame it on something else. Doc refused to see through his love for Sharon, but there was a cold heart beneath her exterior. She'd lost just as much as the rest of us, less in some respects since she still had her mother and her uncle and her cousin, and a place to stay. But she took it on in a different way. She acted like she was the only one who'd ever lost anything in the take over and that, by showing any kindness to Wanda, we were all forgetting that it was her kind who'd chased us down into the caves. Who'd taken away our families. But none of us had forgotten. Especially not me. I just didn't see the purpose in harming her when she didn't make the decision. When she wasn't the one leading the army. It was cruel to kill somebody who was just following her family and doing what she had to do to survive, while being the kindest creature to ever walk.

I led Wanda down to Doc's place and then we started back. I always made sure not to walk too close to her, because my size frightened her. She didn't realize that she did, but she often glanced at my hands while I was working or eating close to her. I knew that she was reminded of them wrapping around her throat and it terrified her that I could so easily do that. But I wasn't expecting it when she spoke. She never spoke around me, as if she believed her voice would send me into a murderous rage. She asked why I hadn't killed her yet and I had to smile at her directness. She was a brave little Soul lost in the human world.

I owed her an explanation and I gave her one. I hadn't killed her because it would be cruel to kill her. I hadn't killed her because she didn't deserve to die. Then, I explained why Doc and I had been following her. Why we'd been trying to stick close to her. It was truly a strange word. I, Ian O'Shea, killer of the Souls, was trying to protect Wanderer, who'd once been my target. I knew in that moment that nothing would ever be normal again. No part of the old me would survive this change.


	6. Stories and Welcome Home Brother

**Stories**

Her voice was pretty when she told stories. Not just the sound of Melanie's voice, but the way Wanda used it. The way she wove details together to let us see these worlds we could never dream of traveling to. Jeb approached Doc and I separately to request we ask her questions but, after that first night, I would have even if he didn't want me to. I would have searched for her in the fields, in the kitchen, on her way through the hallways, and even traveling to her room to interrogate her at night. I was curious. I was hungry to learn from this woman that was thousands of years old, yet was a child at the same time. A child on earth, an ancient in the stars. It was amazing.

Soon, other people wanted to know more and more as well. She'd knead bread while she spoke to us and we'd pepper her with questions. Nobody could deny their curiosity when it came to her and it embarrassed her. Every now and then, I would spot the blush that crept up the back of her neck and, during these times, Jamie would take over, adding details where her voice skipped. It was obvious that she told him the stories first and it was his enthusiasm that helped her through the telling of the stories. She could not have spoken without Jamie giving her voice power.

We adapted to her. We gathered around her at night and grew used to listening to her. She became a part of us, so integral that it was shocking to think of anything different. Just like when a newcomer joined our group and we all demanded where they'd come from, how they'd survived, we were demanding of her. But her stories didn't begin and end with the invasion. They began and ended with her lives and her travels through space. The travels that brought her there to the kitchen, standing in front of us humbly and sharing things with us that we'd never been allowed before. The travels that brought her close enough for me to reach out and touch. To reach out and protect, even if it did put me in front of the oven.

**Welcome Home, Brother**

We should have realized sooner that things would be different when Kyle and Jared came back. The others didn't matter as much. Kyle and Jared were the leaders. Jared with his charisma and Kyle with his brutal, burning anger and way of seizing control of everything that crossed his path. We didn't realize it soon enough to prepare her, but I realized it soon enough to protect her. As soon as they walked in, my mind only told me to get in front of her. Get in front of Wanda and try to calm Kyle down. That was the only thing that could be done. Protect Wanda from Kyle and Jared, because together they would kill her and then she would just be gone from the world and everything would be different and a little less bright.

So I faced down my brother, well, not as much faced down as stared him right in the eyes while he accused me of being a parasite. While he accused her of bringing Seekers down upon us. Like her usual self-sacrificing self, I could hear Wanda behind me, begging me just to let Kyle have her so I wouldn't be hurt. A part of me marveled over that. Once it was her begging Jared to let me kill her so that he wouldn't be hurt. Now, it was her begging me to let Kyle kill her. She wasn't going to die though. I'd kill a thousand times over before I'd let her get hurt once.

Then, just as Kyle backed down, Jared stepped up and claimed the one right that he should never have been given. He claimed her body as his own when he'd denied it from the beginning. He'd never wanted that responsibility and he was trying to wield it like he'd been her protector all along. There were a few of us that stood for her. Lily, Walter, Trudy, Heath, Wes, me, and Doc. We didn't want her hurt. Everybody else was guilty. They felt like they'd betrayed one another by listening to her speak. By growing accustomed to her. But there was no guilt in me. We were doing the right thing and I wasn't going to let Jared ruin that. So I stepped in between him and her and, like her usual crazy self, she stepped back and to the side, where he could reach her. Or where she thought he could reach her. I promised myself that there was no way he was touching her when I was standing in the path.

Luckily, Jeb had a moment of inspiration. He traded Jamie's sensitivity for Wanda's life. He laid claim at Jamie's feet and let him pick it up. Let the boy turn Jared away. We all knew that Jared wouldn't hurt the kid. He couldn't hurt the kid. It was the last thing he had left of Melanie. The last thing he had left of the woman he loved. The woman whose body was shaking behind me. Jared and Kyle turned and left and the rest of us tried to find a solution for her. None that she would accept though as Wanderer took off running away and Jeb stopped me from going after her, even though I just needed to protect her.


	7. She's Still There and Jared

**She's Still There**

I thought about going after Jared, when I first saw Wanda's face. The bruising and the cuts down the side of it. I knew without a doubt that he'd been the one to do that with her. He'd been the one to search her out the night before. I briefly thought about going after him, leaving similar marks on his face so that he would know how it felt, but I realized that it could have been me. If I had gone, if I had left the caves instead of Jared, I would have returned and I would have tried to tear her to pieces. My big hands would have done so much more damage. Perhaps I would have succeeded in killing her. With my force, it wouldn't just be the side of her face scraped off against a cave wall, it would have been the side of her head. I would have killed her without a second thought, and then celebrated the fact that I'd ended her life. My stomach rolled at that thought and threatened to release the eggs in my stomach. It had already been a rough morning. Doc had failed again and, like always, it was up to me and Kyle to bury the bodies. He wasn't even supposed to be trying again. It half killed him each time he had to tear one of them out. But Kyle brought more bodies back, like always, and Doc was forced to cut and slash and kill. So seeing Wanda's face bruised and bloody, just added to my day.

I sent Jamie off to school and led her away. Somewhere she could hide and be safe from all the problems in the cave. Not just the men trying to kill her but the secret nobody wanted her to find out. The secret that would truly let her know where she stood in the caves. So I took her out to the fields and I hid her in the rows and I asked her the question that had played on my mind since Jeb had suggested it to Doc and me. I asked her if Melanie Stryder still existed within the body. If she was still bouncing around in the head like a prisoner. And she was. Then, Wanda shared with me what happened with resistant hosts. What would happen to me if I were captured. It was grand to hear that I would probably not disappear. It was disheartening to realize that, even if I didn't disappear, they would discard me. Throw me out like yesterday's garbage, and that seemed to cause Wanda pain. It seemed to hurt her to think of me disappearing and, although it was strange to think that it made me happy she wanted me there, it truly did. I was happy that a Soul wanted me around. And I was even happier when she didn't flinch away from me when I reached up to cup her face in my hand and examine the damage Jared did to it. For the first time since I'd wrapped my hands around her neck, she let me touch her.

**Jared**

I hated the way he treated her after he returned. He acted as if he was on Jamie's side, like he was acting in Jamie's best interest by believing him and by not letting her get harmed, but he wasn't. He was selfish in the way he treated her, in the way he looked at her. He saw her as belonging to him, but Wanda didn't belong to him. She didn't belong to any of us. She'd found her way to us as a means of finding those that she couldn't help to love. But that didn't mean we owned her. Especially not Jared. He'd once been with Melanie, but Melanie wasn't the keeper of the body, even if she was still present. He treated her like shit.

He didn't trust her, he didn't want her around, yet everybody knew by the way she looked at him that she still felt what Melanie felt before her. Even in a roomful of humans that terrified her, she lit up when she saw him. Without meaning to, she was suddenly glowing. She couldn't help but care for him and he was using it against her to try to reach the girl living in the back of her head. To pull that girl out without thinking about what would happen to the body, what would happen to the Soul living inside of her. I hated him. I shouldn't have. He was a human and she was a Soul. But I didn't want him near her, and I had no control over it.


	8. Walter and My Almost Dead Brother

**Walter and My Almost Dead Brother**

Walter was dying and she and Doc were the only ones doing anything to try to help him. I knew what Jared and Kyle were thinking. She should have been celebrating. Another one of us was dying. One less of us, more of her. But it was written on her face that she didn't want to let him go. It was written in the way she clung to his hand and the way she sobbed his name, checked his breathing every few hours, returned to his side within seconds of eating, sleeping, or going to the bathroom. I watched her from the hospital doorway whenever I could, keeping an eye out for Jared and Kyle and getting shitty looks from Jared for doing just that. But it was her first experience with death. The Souls lived forever. They just traded hosts. The only way we could kill them was shredding them when we yanked them from the humans they inhabited. I didn't know if they died any other way. From what Wanda told us, they didn't. They lived infinitely, something human's didn't have the pleasure of. I would have traded my body if it meant living infinitely with her. If it meant that I would still be myself and I would still be able to hear the way she talked about her lives, her journeys, her feelings.

I could have spent forever staring at her, until the sound of the helicopter invaded the caves. Until we could hear it spinning above us and the suspicions that were slowly faded came roaring back. Suddenly, Jared, Brandt, and Kyle were invading our space. They were taking over everything we were doing. I wanted to kill them for distrusting her. I didn't even here about it until I finished packing for emergency evacuation. I went in to check on her and I found Brandt glaring while she protected Walter. I found his gaze on her and I wanted to pull a Kyle. I wanted to break his nose. But that would have scared Wanda. It would have made her shrink away from me in terror again, the way she did before I slowly gained her trust. So, instead, I just pulled a cot between her and Brandt and made sure he couldn't reach her, he couldn't lay his hands on her like he was his eyes. I planned ways to make sure she stayed safe and ways to make sure he kept his distance. All the while, she spoke softly to Walter, offering him the only comfort she knew how while he was slowly slipping away. Finally, Brandt left, and when he left, I went to get food for Wanda and to do the duties I'd been shirking. So I wasn't there when the decision was made by Jared and Doc to put Walter down. I wasn't there to console her when she realized just what a mercy killing was and how they would be doing it. Maybe if I'd been there, I would have been there to walk her to the bathing room. Maybe I would have been there to wait outside and prevent everything my stupid brother did to her. Maybe I would have been there to take care of her the way I should since her first step inside of the caverns.

Instead, I was only there to rush in and save him. When I heard her scream, the only thing I could think of was losing her. Somebody in the caves taking her away from me. So I ran as fast as I could and instead I found her clinging to my brother as the river tried to suck them in. I was disgusted when I pulled him out and realized what he'd done. My stomach churned like the rushing black river in front of us. I briefly considered throwing him back in it. Instead, I grabbed her and held onto her as tight as I could. I tried to mold my body around hers in a way that wouldn't hurt her. I tried to make myself into a shield for her in that second. I was big enough and she was small enough to manage. I could have stayed like that forever and kept her safe. I could have stayed like that forever and never let anybody else in. But she had to go back to the hospital and my fucking brother needed taken care of, even though I wanted to kill him, she denied any danger on his part. She even lied to Jebb, Jared, the whole fucking caves just so she could protect a would-be murderer. I should have kept her in my arms forever.

Of course, it was Jared who got to play hero and knock my brother out again after he awoke. But he quickly ruined that with his crudeness in the way he approached the fact that she was female. Of course she was a female. How could he not see that? It wasn't just the body she wore. It was the way she carried the body. The way she spoke. Acted. Just was. She was a female and that's all there was to it. Of course, the 'potential mother' factor was terrifying. Not only because millions of small souls could come from Wanda, but, because if that's the route she chose, she would be gone, but not truly gone. There would be pieces of her left but the essence of her would be gone, split into a million tiny pieces. But she didn't have to be scared long because we drugged her so we could take care of Walter and let her be there for his burial.

I got to carry her to his burial. I was able to support her tiny body in my arms as we walked to Walter's final resting place. And it was me she turned to for help when she wanted to say her goodbyes to him. It was me she turned to when she wanted comfort. Because I was there for her. I was her protector.


End file.
